


satellite call [the campfire hymns remix]

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Multi, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 02:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4203873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hestia watches them, the children and their shifting souls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	satellite call [the campfire hymns remix]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [callunavulgari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/gifts).
  * Inspired by [smile, despite everything](https://archiveofourown.org/works/587435) by [callunavulgari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari). 
  * Inspired by [Bedroom Hymns](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028731) by [callunavulgari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari). 



> I loved both stories, and couldn't pick, so I decided to try a hybrid remix. I hope the result came out well.
> 
> Mostly, the daemons are the ones callunavulgari outlined in her story. Hestia's pseudodaemon is my own creation; Bianca's daemon, and the idea of huntresses' daemons never settling, is a departure from the original. Other than that, I kept the original matchups.
> 
> 07/05/15 - fixed a couple tense errors.
> 
> 07/09/15 - to that one anon, who knows who they are: have you considered, like, gardening? Very relaxing hobby, gardening.

In her first year watching Chiron’s camp’s hearth – the first camp, tucked away in the north of England, when first the children of the gods began to need their natures explained to them – Hestia started wearing a bird made of fire on her shoulder. No one could ever mistake him for a true daemon, of course, but it made the children a little less afraid, to have something animal-shaped and separate from her speaking to their daemons on her behalf.

(It was so much easier to learn what they needed – a hot meal or to sleep by the hearth, a warm voice or the quiet crackle of the flames – from the daemons.)

Her false-daemon went with her as they travelled across the expanding West, coaxing secret hurts from demigods in wool skirts and heavy coats, in trousers and saddle-shoes, in blue jeans and orange cotton. Not enough of the campers came down to the fire; they never did. Hestia built it big and bright, and kept her daemon asking every creature – temporarily a cat-size dragon, a thundering horse, a wolf; you could always tell the newest campers by how fierce their still-shifting daemons made themselves.

Bianca di Angelo came to the fire before her brother did, her daemon a hunting hawk with the silver flicker in his feathers that marked him as never-settling. “Greetings, Hunter,” Hestia said, and kept her hand on her nameless fire-bird. A daemon kissed by Artemis was unlikely to be soothed by a piece of another goddess.

“Hello, Lady,” Bianca said, bowing. “I won’t be here long, but – I wanted to see the fire.”

“There’s always a place waiting,” Hestia said, and patted the ground beside her. “What troubles you?”

“Nothing,” Bianca said, sitting, her arms folded over her knees. Her daemon preened her hair. “Nothing. I… nothing.”

“I see,” Hestia said softly, and stoked the fire. Bianca cleared her throat.

“Am I a terrible sister?” she asked.

“Well, I have rather strange standards for that,” Hestia said, laughing. “But. We hurt our family, and they hurt us; it’s a part of being alive.” A log crumbled in the fire, sparks flying up. “Sometimes we have to do it.”

“So… not really?”

“I think you’re a sister,” Hestia said, softly. “Not a mother. Sisters grow up – or they don’t, in your case. They leave and come home. Maybe come back with a present.”

Even goddesses make mistakes.

She met Nico long before she realized the mistake she’d made, only a few days after his sister left the campfire behind.

“My name is Hestia,” she said, to the scrappy boy with the bat clinging to the pocket of his coat. He pursed his lips, tilting his head at her.

“Huh,” he said. “You’re a _really_ weird card.”

“…I beg your pardon?” Hestia said, trying not to laugh. Her little bird gave off bright flickers of flame.

“Your card!” he says. “You have a _really_ weird Mythomagic card. You don’t have any attack power, but as long as you’re on the battlefield, destroyed god and hero miniatures can be removed from the game for three turns and returned with half health.”

“Really?” Hestia raised her eyebrows.

“Yeah! Nothing else does that. It’s a hard power to work into a deck, but there’ve been a couple really cool ones.” At some point, his daemon had shifted into a squirrel, now scampering up his jacket to chitter on his shoulder. “There was a championship deck, I think? I don’t know, I didn’t pay that much attention because it was all really expensive to build and it’s not really my thing.”

“A championship!” Hestia said, lips twitching. “Well. That’s flattering.”

“Yeah. It’s called Hope of the Hearth, I think? The power, not the championship. Uh, right, Bianca told me to be more polite, I’m sorry.” He bowed, awkward and clumsy; his daemon clung to his shoulder. “Uh, hello, Lady Hestia.”

“Hello, Nico di Angelo,” Hestia said, as her daemon gave off more sparks. “Welcome to my fire.”

When she saw him next, he was gangly and shadow-eyed, too thin, his hair hanging grimy in his eyes. “Excuse me, Lady,” he said, bowing, smooth but for the way he favored his leg. His daemon crouched by his side in jackal-shape, scavenger’s canines catching the firelight. “I need – can I stay, for a while?”

“Of course,” Hestia said. “Be welcome, nephew.”

His eyes were wide as he settled out of the way of the smoke. His daemon bowed her head when Hestia sent her firebird over to speak.

When dawn cracked over the treetops and the first voices stirred in the cabins, shrieks about breakfast and shower rights, Nico picked himself up off the ground, looking to the woods. “Thank you, Lady,” he said, and slipped away, feet quiet on the leaves. Hestia let him go. You can’t keep people trapped at your hearth longer than they want to stay.

Even goddesses make mistakes.

Hestia could never quite recall, later, the Greek and Roman split, could never quite remember Vesta torn out of her and snarling about the children of her most faithful priestess, about Rhea Silvia’s boy and his city and the burning flame of empire. She doubted any of her family could remember it quite right. But when at last she came back to herself, she knew she’d heard that Nico di Angelo was lost in Tartarus, nothing and no one but his death-shaped soul at his side.

When she saw them next, at the victory campfire, his daemon had a scar rippling along her shoulder, and Hestia had to bite her lip. But his daemon had Jason Grace’s eagle perched on her head too, next to Annabeth Chase’s owl, and Nico was laughing, at least.

Across the fire, a girl with death and gold in her bones sat against a tree, away from the laughter. A bright-winged moth daemon fluttered in front of her face, a few inches closer to the group around the fire, a few inches further away.

Hestia dusted off her hands and stood.

“Hazel Levesque,” she said. “You should go to your family. They love you.”

Years passed. Campers and legionnaires came to Hestia’s campfire; campers and legionnaires came to Vesta’s sacred flame, too. She spoke to more of them now.

One day, a prayer curled around her heart, a familiar voice saying _lady, thank you._ When she followed it back, she found Nico di Angelo with one hand on a mantle, his scarred daemon curled on Percy Jackson’s bare feet. Annabeth Chase played chess with Frank Zhang at a dining-room table; Hazel Levesque was asleep with her head on Nico’s lap. Above the hearthfire was a picture of Percy, Nico, and Annabeth together, a snowy New York City behind them; in the hallway sat suitcases stamped with seals of Roman make.

“Thank you,” Nico whispered to the fire, safe in his home with his family come to visit. Hestia didn’t answer him aloud, but she let the flames leap for a fleeting moment into the shape of a bird.

Sometimes even goddesses get the chance to see their mistakes mended.


End file.
